Eight Senate Democrats are opposing speedy action on President Barack Obama’s bill to combat global warming, complicating prospects for the legislation and creating problems for their party’s leaders.

The eight Democrats disapprove of using the annual budget debate to pass Obama’s “cap and trade” bill to fight greenhouse gas emissions, a measure that divides lawmakers, environmentalists and businesses. The lawmakers’ opposition makes it more difficult for Democratic leaders to move the bill without a threat of a Republican filibuster.

The budget debate is the only way to circumvent Senate rules that allow a unified GOP to stop a bill through filibusters.

“Enactment of a cap-and-trade regime is likely to influence nearly every feature of the U.S. economy,” wrote the Democratic senators, mostly moderates. They were joined by 25 Republicans. “Legislation so far-reaching should be fully vetted and given appropriate time for debate.”

It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, but Democrats and allied independents currently control 58 seats…

A study from the George C. Marshall Institute tries to quantify the costs of a cap-and-trade plan to reduce carbon emissions. They're not small, to say the least: And although this study uses 2008 as a baseline, the Obama plan would hit in 2012 and could come in combo with a hike in investment and incomes taxes for wealthier Americans and the creation of a special healthcare tax:

The authors find that the constraints posed by the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade approach is equivalent to a constant (in percentage terms) consumption decrease of about 1% each year, continuing to 2050. Put another way, the cap-and-trade approach is the equivalent of a permanent tax increase for the average American household, which was estimated to be $1,100 in 2008, would rise to $1,437 by 2015, to $1,979 in 2030, and $2,979 in 2050.

Reviewing a host of recent studies, Buckley and Mityakov show that estimates of job losses attributable to cap-and-trade range in the hundreds of thousands. The price for energy paid by the American consumer also will rise. The studies reviewed showed electricity prices jumping 5-15% by 2015, natural gas prices up 12-50% by 2015, and gasoline prices up 9-145% by 2015. As an illustration, gasoline would suffer a 16 cent price increase per gallon at the low end of the estimates to a $2.58 penalty at the high end (using the January 2009 reported retail price of $1.78 per gallon).

Hopefully Obama's support in Congress will continue to crumble as common sense makes a comeback. Then the rest of his term will be characterized by failure after failure. He's already bankrupted the nation, we can't survive any more of his "change."

Also, last I checked Obama's approval rating was down to 60%. That's lower than George W. Bush after his first 50 days AND lower than Jimmy Carter's at this stage in his presidency. In fact, I believe that Barrack Obama has the lowest "first-50-days" approval rating since they've been recording things.

Hopefully Obama's support in Congress will continue to crumble as common sense makes a comeback. Then the rest of his term will be characterized by failure after failure. He's already bankrupted the nation, we can't survive any more of his "change."

Also, last I checked Obama's approval rating was down to 60%. That's lower than George W. Bush after his first 50 days AND lower than Jimmy Carter's at this stage in his presidency. In fact, I believe that Barrack Obama has the lowest "first-50-days" approval rating since they've been recording things.

In case you're interested, I created a thread regarding the gallup update on Obama's approval and disapproval rating, coupled with the opening/closing of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (thanks to the brilliance of llamafighter):http://www.matt-hughes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=894